Raytheon Reviews in El Segundo, CA

Former Employee – worked at Raytheon full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Chill work environment.
Job stability.
Decent pay.
40 hour work week.
Good benefits
Flexible work hours.
Good people.

Cons – Management doesn't care about employees.
Old technology.
Gov contracting has too many hoops.
9/10 employees can't wait to leave.
Benefits packages are getting worse.
Because of clearances and background checks, a lot of employees there are extremely risk averse, backwards thinking, and close minded.
Huge learning gap between old and young.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Interesting work in Customer-funded R&D (CRAD) programs if you know where to look
Flexible, stable hours
Pension for those hired in prior to the early 90's
Defense industry job security

Cons – Company rewards the bureaucracy, not the contributors
Lousy salary and career growth thanks to the old guard
Technology pushes against huge inertia
Kiss your travel plans good bye thanks to the ever-tightening security restrictions
Your career depends on how easy/hard you can be cleared to special access programs

Advice to Senior Management – Preaching innovation doesn't cultivate innovation. You can start by empowering the engineers with the resource and time to innovate rather than worry about your greedy selves.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Good work Environment
Average pay and benefits
Unstable/growth industry, dependent upon government funding
Rewarding work where you can make a difference in the national security and defense

Cons – Work-life balance can get out of sync easily, there is no respect at work, even though they preach it weekly via email, but if there is a dead line or not, you'll end up working overtime or the weekend, for extended periods of time based on company's desire to meet demanding project schedules.
Too many unstable internal processes, due to, many merger and acquisitions, where none were unified.
Poor management mind set with cut throat office politics.

Advice to Senior Management – The company needs to make better management decisions and train them all before putting them to work.
Reduce the management layers and reduce the bureaucracy.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Raytheon

Pros – - Benefits were quite good eg 7% total 401k match
- Flexible schedule, altho it depended on
- Once you got to know the people, many of them were quite nice

Cons – - It was impossible to get a promotion/ decent raise
- R6S was a joke. At one point, my dept required each of us to 2 projects per year. They were a huge waste of time that were only completed to "check the box" for Annual review time
- In many depts home/ work life balance was none existent. I knew people who were supposedly on the 9/80 schedule and who worked EVERY Friday without exception. In my case, towards the end, I was working late nights, and at least 8 - 12 hours a weekend.
- Management biases against minorities
- Incompetent management that did not know anything about the jobs/ responsibilities of the people they managed

Advice to Senior Management – - Communicate what is happening in the company. It doesnt make sense to send one message when the troops in the trenches are aware of a completely different reality e.g. saying the company is doing great and is profitable and then having several rounds of RIFs
- Be open to hearing ideas that are different from your own

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon

Pros – Pay and benefits are comparable or better than industry standard. Highly diverse employee base. Work is of high value to society and the country.

Cons – No training and incompetent functional management result in poor performance on contracts. Management is very biased and bases promotions and raises on how well they like an employee instead of skills or performance. Most contracts are of a classified nature, which adds additional hinderance to career growth. There is no job stability and engineers are treated with very little respect. They're considered "labor" and "expense items" instead of the professionals behind successful capture and execution of programs.

Advice to Senior Management – Functional management needs a complete overhaul. Business base is eroding and Raytheon is not competitive because of incompetence and lack of emphasis on technical quality.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Raytheon

Pros – Great benefits package, good salaries (good, not great), profit sharing, yearly bonuses, flexible work time, stock matching, 401K package has lots of investment options, parking garage is free & plentiful, corporate culture is relatively easy to understand, 3 weeks initial PTO - goes to 4 weeks after 5 years with the company, & 5 weeks after 15 years.

Cons – Promotions are at a complete standstill in certain areas & departments, geographical splits of departments means favoritism of home offices, inability to predict future work beyond six month window leads to large work shortages, fears of layoffs, targeted firings, targeted layoffs, good old boy network of senior program managers, sexist behavior towards women managers & leadership, cronyism is evident amongst departments, hero-shithead rollercoaster means you never know how your year is going to turn out, performance reviews focus on wrong objectives, section heads/line management pay too much attention to program managers & not engineers, security clearances take forever to get, secret, top secret, etc., line management hold grudges & engage in multi-year vendettas during annual performance reviews, rankings, & salary raises.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop letting HR abuse your employees, stop letting management drive off all the young talent by placing their careers in stasis, ultimately leading to people leaving in droves for greener pastures, stop the brain drain by insisting that junior engineers work on projects with senior engineers to be mentored in skill sets necessary for the next generation, stop bringing back retirees as consultants, stop allowing project managers to save money by utilizing senior engineers only, move people around to break up political networks, stop the favoritism evident in promotions, stop pushing the bar so high that people can't get promoted, foster a culture of increased design, design skills, cross-disciplinary skills, get rid of the stringent entry requirements for some programs involving rotating assignments, business degrees for engineers, or continuing education. Stop getting rid of all of your administrative assistants, they perform valuable functions for the engineers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon

Pros – Leading technologies and Top Pay

Cons – management and operational philosophies are old school. If you have had experience at a progressive company it will be extremly hard to asimilate here.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn and practice Trust & Respect

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon

Pros – benefits and pay is ok
great place to start your career
casual

Cons – A def culture problem in El Segundo, too many levels of mid and upper level management making incompetent decisions, turnover, old school and lack creativity in the good ole boy network(s).
Unfortunately, favortism, nepotism and rule by an iron fist in some depts still apply here.
Recognition or promotion only applies if your nose isnt where its supposed to be.
Respect... talk, talk, talk, and no...some just keep on talking.
Ethics...more talk and not enough real behavior modification.
Profit metrics and who gets the RBI are the key drivers for programs. Any room for customer?
Another poster commented on lack of eye contact or recognition in the hallways, what, do i dress funny? not up to your standard to at least acknowledge ones very existance?
The wasted tax payer money and failed X-Lounge playroom, (the Google Experiment) has the same people "playing" while the rest of us working stiffs are ruled by militant management who are just looking for the opportunity to catch anyone "goofing off".
Now that the GAO money well is running dry, the products are suffering, the people are suffering..but corp profits, RBI's and cash are up!, so many of you are sitting on a overhead charge.
If you are assigned to a successful program, good luck, someone higher up will def cram their way up onto your turf and steal your success thunder, thats the Raytheon Way of doing business.
Stressful.....the number of ambulances/fire dept visits, sudden deaths and illnesses, must be having an affect on the bottom line, higher insurance premiums and OSHA recordables.
Lastly, young people, begin your career here, take as much knowledge as you can and move on to another where you will be valued, respected and treated like you are human, unless you like to be mean, "mean people are more successful than nice people"--so the story goes. The older crowd is unfortunately stuck waiting to claim payout for their years, if they survive that is.

Advice to Senior Management – help change the culture, you only live once in this lifetime, "cant take it with you" ya know
maybe on-site certified industrial psychologists?

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon

Pros – When there is work it is fun, but lately there hasn't been much (con). Flexible schedule is great. Location is great. Dress is very casual. Limited opportunity for tuition reimbursement.

Cons – I transferred from Raytheon Missile Systems and absolutely enjoeyed Raytheon until I came to El Segundo (Space and Airborne Systems). Work is slow and unstable and people are quick to stab you in the back. Learning opportunities are limited unless you are willing to work for free. Processes have flooded this place so getting work done is nearly impossible. Work is not tailored to skillsets. Some managers are awefull and tend to be those responsible for career development. NO INOVATION CULTURE. This company was founded on innovation and management has driven it out of the company. Young talent is quickly leaving the company after only a few years.

Advice to Senior Management – Instead of laying off the bottom of the ladder, maybe consider laying off the incompetent managers. Reduce processes and create a better culter for innovation.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Raytheon

Pros – Decent benefits.
9-80 work schedule option.
Flexible paid time off (PTO)
Education reimbursement for engineering masters and MBA programs

Cons – Large corporate structure slows career advancement.
Line management most interested in process generation and re-organization.
Performance compensation based upon quotas instead of actual employee performance.
Emphasize "work life balance" and 9-80 work schedule, but off Friday meetings are often scheduled, weekend work and long hours are expected along with uncompensated overtime.

Advice to Senior Management – Analyze successful programs instead of forcing corrective actions developed from large program failures.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend